Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy, Moonlight) and skateboarding legend Tony Hawk both took to Twitter to rave about film, Jenkins writing "The heart in this film is so damn big."

MINDING THE GAP is an endlessly engrossing film about the pain and struggle of everyday kids becoming everyday adults. Part skate doc part cinematic treatise on the tension inherent in boys becoming men, the film’s strength lies in Bing’s insistence on pushing, gently...

The powerful, touching documentary Minding The Gap is now available on @Hulu & select screenings. I can’t recommend it enough. Congrats to Bing Liu on capturing this important story of three friends that find salvation from their abusive childhoods through their love for skating. pic.twitter.com/unHiF8nMY0

Troves of viewers also turned to Twitter to process and laud Minding the Gap – the common thread of their reactions was intense gratitude to Liu and the film:

If you have gone through child abuse, mental illness, depression or just love skateboarding in general you NEED to watch “Minding The Gap” on Hulu! This documentary is amazing and hits so many different feels for me growing up.

Minding The Gap (@MindingGapFilm) is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. Absolutely perfect. As a social worker for a decade I’ve never seen a better portrayal of parenthood, poverty, child abuse, racism, and chosen family. Please watch it and support it! Thank you, Bing

Aa someone who grew up in small-town Illinois and knew the struggles of low-income kids my age, MINDING THE GAP (which just came to Hulu) hit extremely close to home for me. It's a heartbreaking, cathartic doc about poverty and how we cope with abuse, and it's essential viewing.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but Minding the Gap is fantastic. A deeply realized doc about very Midwestern ideas of responsibility, masculinity and cycles of abuse across multiple fault lines, all through the lens of a skateboarding film. Make the time to see this one.

Praise for Minding the Gap:
"Astonishing... a rich, devastating essay on race, class and manhood in 21st-century America."
– A. O. Scott, New York Times

"Extraordinary... Minding the Gap is an essay that never feels like an essay, an intelligent and compassionate grappling with some of the most painful issues presently haunting the body politic: toxic masculinity and domestic violence, economic depression and a deep, existential despair."
– Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

"There isn't a word of explicit politics in the film, but Liu's confrontation with abuse and trauma as a way of confronting its unconscious legacy, of changing one's own behavior and improving one's own life and the lives of one's own family and friends, is an essentially and crucially political act."
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"An extraordinary feat of filmmaking... Liu's intimacy with his subjects becomes contagious, to the point where their small victories are thrilling and their failures feel devastating."
– Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic

"A powerful film about escaping the loop of poverty and toxic masculinity in Rust Belt America"
– Anna Menta, Newsweek

"A documentary with an angry undercurrent, it’s also an affectionate study of Mr. Liu’s longtime, hardcore skateboarding friends—each of whom is trying to map a course from mangled childhood to unsteady maturity. As such, it possesses an intimacy that could never be acquired without years of shared experience, and heartache. And probably road rash."
– John Anderson, Wall Street Journal

"What starts as a raucous celebration of youthful freedom consciously expands to cover the bonds of friendship, racial identity, the hard slog of being responsible, and the generational after-effects of trauma."
– Robert Abele, The Wrap

"Liu creates an unforgettable film experience that will knock the wind out of you."
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"A raw portrait of trauma and catharsis, and an affecting example of how non-fiction cinema can be a vehicle for genuine empathy."
– Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

"Bing's movie stands out for the complexity of its integrity, and its ability to reveal his own experiences empathically."
– K. Austin Collins, Vanity Fair

"It's a sight to behold, the way Minding the Gap organically evolves from a meditative portrait of skateboarding – complete with gorgeously fluid Steadicam shots of boarders ripping down city streets – into a nuanced character study of repressed trauma."
– Vikram Murthi, AV Club

The film has won 29 awards since its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival this past January, where it won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking. The film won Best Documentary at Sarasota, Minneapolis St. Paul, RiverRun, Nashville, Mountainfilm, CAAMfest, Docs Against Gravity and Biografilm Festival. It won over juries and audiences alike, winning the Audience Award at Full Frame, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase, Docs Against Gravity, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and Mountainfilm.